Why Westeros Is Stuck In The Pre-Industrial Era

Note: this
article is spoiler-free. If you have watched the first three
series and want to remind yourself who is who and to catch up on
the story so far check out our explainer.

Westeros, the primary location of Game of Thrones, has much in
common with Western Europe of the middle ages. Its technology is
similar, society is feudal and even the climate is roughly the
same – save for the odd chilly spell.

But the key difference is Westeros has been more or less like
this for some 6,000 years. When you consider the evolution of
Western Europe in the time since the fall of the Roman Empire – a
mere 1,500 years ago – it’s worth asking how its literary sibling
could have stayed so undeveloped. Why has Westeros not
experienced an industrial revolution?

The first thing to point out is that economic development is not
a simply continuous process, but one of fits and starts. In
particular, “step changes” in the availability of general purpose
technologies divide eras: once you have experienced a
technological transition of this kind, it is difficult to imagine
or remember the world as it was before. The great industrial
revolution that began in the 18th century was one such
transition.

Surging ahead

This revolution did not come about overnight. It was actually the
culmination of a long period characterised by “surges” of earlier
technologies. Take for instance the stirrup. Its emergence solved
the problem of how one could fight from horseback and this in
turn enabled the development of the institutions of chivalry.

One surge yet to arrive in Westeros is the cannon. In Europe they
were already in use by the time of Crecy in 1345, which would put
them well within the technological ambit of Westerosi conflict.

Yet another is banking, which is a necessary condition for
investment in building technological capacity; without banks to
create money, Westeros is likely to be in a permanent state of
monetary shortage with corresponding lack of investment.

You know nothing about
economics, Jon Snow.Sky
Atlantic

You know nothing about economics, Jon Snow. Sky Atlantic

The closest thing Game of Thrones has to modern banking is across
the sea in Essos, where the Iron Bank of Braavos provides finance
for clients across the world. The bank has a modern-day parallel:
like the IMF, it has acquired a reputation for engineering regime
change when it believes debts might not be repaid. As the books
illustrate, financial power leads to political influence:

When princes defaulted on their debts to lesser banks, ruined
bankers sold their wives and children into slavery and opened
their own veins. When princes failed to repay the Iron Bank,
new princes sprang up from nowhere and took their thrones.

However, the Iron Bank’s main interest is in sovereign banking
which doesn’t necessarily stimulate the economy: in Robert
Baratheon’s reign such loans went largely towards useless
pageants and tournaments. The Bank ignores the mundane everyday
lending to business that funds activity and investment.

Perhaps a bigger part of the puzzle is why competition among the
High Lords doesn’t fuel armed development and in turn the
development of military industrial complexes in the seven
kingdoms. But Westeros hasn’t always been the war-torn region
depicted in Game of Thrones: for the past few centuries the
Targaryen kings and their weapons of mass destruction – dragons –
kept the individual kingdoms from developing these capacities.
There is an interesting non-European parallel here with China,
where innovation was held back by a succession of dynasties that
wished to prevent threats to the central control.

Industrial growth also requires energy. Coal, more efficient than
peat or wood, provided the fuel for the industrial revolution and
there is no evidence coal or other fossil fuels exist in Westeros
or beyond. The ability to put great engines to work might be
beyond even an industrialising Seven Kingdoms.

But beside this, Westeros has labour, plenty of land, a banking
industry of sorts and presumably similar resources to
18th-century Europe. It seems most of the conditions are in place
for a series of technological surges. So why hasn’t it broken out
of the middle ages?

The knowledge economy

The lack of development in Westeros is ultimately explained by
the way knowledge is hoarded by one group of people.

In Europe, industrialisation depended on the dissemination of
ideas. The more know-how was spread widely, the more people could
hear of an innovation and could copy or improve it, building an
accelerating cycle of technological development.

In Westeros however, technological innovations are locked up in
one institution: The Citadel, home to an order of scholars known
as the Maesters (think Maester Luwin of Winterfell who guarded
Bran and Rickon, or Grand Maester Pycelle of the court in King’s
Landing).

Why don’t we have flying
cars? Blame this guy.HBO

The Maesters sit on the only trove of scientific knowledge in
Westeros. Alongside the nobility, they are among the very few
able to read and write. Members are embedded within almost all of
the castles and great houses of the Kingdom and they seem at this
point to be using their control of information and the Raven Net
communication system to cultivate their influence.

So ultimately it may take a political shake-up for the Game of
Thrones universe to catch up with 18th-century Europe. Breaking
up the feudal system with its attendant absurdities would help –
after all, a mid-ranking Lord would be ill-advised to attract
attention by developing machinery.

And just as the 16th-century Reformation broke the church’s
near-monopoly on education and paved the way for future
technological advances, so Westeros must reform its Maesters.

Until the Maesters are taken on and education becomes widespread,
Westeros is doomed to stay in the same High Medieval rut. Good
news for fans of high fantasy, bad news for the characters
trapped in it. Winter is coming and it would be nice if they had
central heating.

Peter Antonioni currently receives no funding beyond what his
employer beneficently provides. He is an enthusiastic consumer of
products related to the subject of this article, but has no
connection either to the production staff on the show, nor to GRR
Martin or the distinctive likenesses thereof.